[rohrpost] William S. Burroughs: The Electronic Revolution [3/3]
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textz@textz.com
Sun, 07 Jan 2001 19:55:22 +0100
Remember the life cycle of a virus ... penetration of a cell or
activation within the cell, replication within the cell, escape
from the cell to invade other cells, escape from host to infect
a new host. This infection can take place in many ways and those
who find themselves heavy with the load of a new virus generally
use a shotgun technique to cover a wide range of infection
routes... cough, sneeze, spit and fart at every opportunity,
Save shit, piss, snot, scabs, sweat stained clothes and all
bodily secretions for dehydration. The composite dust can be
unobtrusively billowed out a roach bellows in subways, dropped
from windows in bags, or sprayed out a crop duster ... Carry
with you at all times an assortment of vectors ... lice, fleas,
bed bugs, and little aviaries of mosquitoes and biting flies
filled with your blood ... I see no beauty in that.
There is only one case of favourable virus influence benefiting
an obscure species of Australien mice. On the other hand, if a
virus produces no damaging symptoms we have no way of
ascertaining its existence and this happens with latent virus
infections. It has been suggested that yellow races resulted
from a jaundice- like virus which produced a permanent mutation
not necessarily damaging, which was passed along genetically.
The same may be true of the word. The word itself may be a virus
that has achieved a permanent status with the host. However, no
known virus in existence at the present time acts in this
manner, so the question of a benefit virus remains open. It
seems advisable to concentrate on a general defence against all
virus.
Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, says that certain words and
word combinations can produces serious illnesses and mental
disturbances. I can claim some skill in the scrivener's trade,
but I cannot guarantee to write a passage that will make someone
physically ill. If Mr.Hubbard's claim is justified, this is
certainly a matter for further research, and we can easily find
out experimentally whether his claim is justified or not. Mr.
Hubbard bases the power he attributes to words on his theory of
engrams. An engram is defined as word,sound,image recorded by
the subject in a period of pain and unconsciousness. Some of his
material may be reassuring: "I think he's going to be alright."
Reassuring material is an ally engram. Ally engrams, according
to Mr Hubbard, are just as bad as hostile as pain engrams. Any
part of this recording played back to the subject later will
reactivate operation pain, he may actually develop a headache
and feel depressed, anxious, or tense. Well, Mr Hubbard's engram
theory is very easily subject to experimental verification. Take
ten volunteer subjects, subject them to a pain stimulus
accompanied by certain words and sounds and images. You can act
out little skits.
"Quickly, nurse , before I lose my little nigger," bellows the
southern surgeon, and now a beefy white hand falls on the
fragile black shoulder. "Yes, he's going to be alright. He's
going to pull through."
If I had my way I'd let these animals die on the operating
table."
"You do not have your way, you have your duty as a doctor, we
must do everything in our power to save human lives."
And so forth.
It is the tough cop and the con cop. The ally engram is
ineffective without the pain engram, just as the con cop's arm
around your shoulder, his soft persuasive voice in your ear, are
indeed sweet nothings without the tough cop's blackjack. Now to
what extent can words recorded during medical unconsciousness be
recalled during hypnosis or scientological processing? To what
Extent does the playback of this material affect the subject
unpleasantly? Is the effect enhanced by scrambling the material,
pain and ally, at very short intervals? It would seem that a
scrambled engram's picture could almost dump an operating scene
right in the subject's lap. Mr. Hubbard has charted his version
of what he calls the reactive mind. This is roughly similar to
Freud's ID, a sort of built-in self defeating mechanism. As set
forth by Mr. Hubbard this consists of a number of quite ordinary
phrases. He claims that reading these phrases, or hearing them
spoken, can cause illness, and gives this as his reason for not
publishing this material. Is he perhaps saying that these are
magic words? Spells, in fact? If so, they could be quite a
weapon scrambled up with imaginative sound-and-image track. Here
now is the magic that turns men into swine. To be an animal: a
lone pig grunts, shits, squeals and slobbers down garbage. To be
animals: A chorus of a thousand pigs. Cut that in with video
tape police pictures and play it back to them and see if you get
a reaction from this so reactive mind.
Now here is another. To be a body, well it's sure an attractive
body, rope the marks in. And a nice body symphony to go with it,
rythmic heart beats, contented stomach rumbles. To be bodies:
recordings and pictures of hideous, aged, diseased bodies
farting, pissing, shitting, groaning, dying. To do everything:
man in a filth apartment surrounded by unpaid bills, unanswered
letters, jumps up and starts washing dishes and writing letters.
To do nothing: he slumps in a chair, jumps up, slumps in chair,
jumps up. Finally, slumps in a chair, drooling like an idiot
helplessness, while he looks at the disorder piled around him.
The reactive mind commands can also be used to advantage with
illness tapes. While projecting past cold sore on to the
subject's face, and playing him back to him a past illness tape,
you can say: to be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there,
to be a body, to be bodies, to stay in, to stay out, to stay
present, to stay absent. To what extent are these reactive mind
phrases when scrambled effective in causing disagreeable
symptoms in control volunteer subjects? As to Mr. Hubbard's
claim for the reactive mind, only research can give us the
answers.
The RM then is an artifact designed to limit and stultify on a
mass scale. In order to have this effect it must be widely
implanted. This can readily be done with modern electronic
equipment and techniques described in this treatis. The RM
consists of commands which seem harmless and in fact unavoidable
... To be a body ... but which have the most horrific
consequences.
Here are some sample RM screen effects ...
As the theatre darkens a bright light appears on the left side
of the screen. The screen lights up.
To be nobody ... On screen shadow of ladder and soldier
incinerated by the Hiroshima blast
To be everybody ... Street crowds, riots, panics
To be me ... A beautiful girl and a handsome young man point to
selves
To be you ... They point to audience
Hideous hags and old men, lepers, drooling idiots point to
themselves and to the audience as they intone ...
To be me
To be you
Command no 5 ... To be myself
Command no 6 ... To be others
On screen a narcotics officer is addressing an audience of
school boys, spread out in front of him are syringes, kief
pipes, samples of heroin, hashiesh, LSD.
Officer: "Five trips on a drug can be a pleasant and exciting
experience..."
On screen young trippers ..."I'm really myself for the first
time" Etc. Happy trips ...To be myself ...no 5 ...
Officer: "THE SIXTH WILL PROBABLY BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF"
Shot shows a man blowing his head off with a shotgun in his
mouth...
Officer: "Like a 15 year old boy I knew until recently, you
could well end up dying in your own spew ..." To be others no 6
...
To be an animal ... A lone Wolf Scout ...
To be animals: He joins other wolf scouts playing, laughing,
shouting
To be an animal ... Bestial and ugly human behaviour ...brawls,
disgusting, eating and sex scenes
To be animals ... Cows, sheep and pigs driven to the slaughter
house
To be a body
To be bodies
A beautiful body ... a copulating couple ... Cut back and forth
and run on seven second loop for several minutes ... scramble at
different speeds ... Audience must be made to realise that to be
a body is to be bodies
...A body only exists to be other bodies.
To be a body ...Death scenes and recordings ... a scramble of
last words
To be bodies ... Vista of cemeteries ...
To do it now ... Couple embracing hotter and hotter
To do it now ... A condemned cell ... Condemned man is same
actor as lover ... He is led away by the guards screaming and
struggling. Cut back and forth between sex scene and man led to
execution. Couple in sex scene have an orgasm as the condemned
man is hanged, electrocuted, gassed, garroted, shot in the head
with a pistol
To do it later ... The couple pull away ...One wants to go out
and eat and go to a show or something... They put on their hats
To do it later ... Warder arrives at condemned cell to tell the
prisoner he has a stay of execution
To do it now ... Grim faces in the Pentegon. Strategic is on the
way ... Well THIS IS IT ... This sequence cut in with sex scenes
and a condemned man led to execution, culminates in execution,
orgasm, nuclear explosion ...The condemned lover is a horribly
burned survivor
To do it later ... 1920 walk out sequence to "The Sunny Side of
the Street" ... A disappointed general turns from the phone to
say the president has opened top level hot wire talks with
Russia and China ... Condemned man gets another stay of
execution
To be an animal ... One lemming busily eating lichen ...
To be animals ... Hordes of lemmings swarming all over each
other in mounting hysteria ...A pile of drowned lemmings in
front of somebody's nice little cottage on a Finnish lake where
he is methodically going through sex positions with his girl
friend. They wake up in a stink of dead lemmings
To be an animal ... Little boy put on a pot
To be animals ...The man has just been hanged. The doctor steps
forward with a stethoscope
To stay down ... Body is carried out with the rope around neck
... Naked corpses on the autopsy table ... corpse buried in
quick lime.
To stay up ...Erect phallus
To stay down ... White man burns off a Negro's genitals with
blow torch ... Theatre darkens into the blow torch on the left
side of the screen
To stay present
To stay absent
To stay present ... A boy masturbates in front of sex pictures
... Cut to face of white man who is burning off black genitals
with blow torch
To stay absent ... Sex phantasies of the boy ... The black
slumps dead with genitals burned off and intestines popping out
To stay present ... Boy watches strip tease, intent, fascinated
...A man stands on trap about to be hanged
To stay present ...Sex phantasies of the boy ..."I ponounce this
man dead."
To stay present ... Boy wistles at girl in street ... A man's
body twists in the electric chair, his leg hairs crackling a
blue fire
To stay absent ... Boy sees himself in bed with girl ... Man
slumps dead in chair smoke curling from under the hood saliva
dripping from his mouth...
The theatre lights up. In the sky a plane over Hiroshima
...Little Boy slides out
To stay present ... The plane, the pilot, thew American flag ...
To stay absent ... theatre darkens into atomic blast on screen
Here we see ordinary men and women going about their ordinary
everyday jobs and diversions ... subways, streets, buses,
trains, airports, stations, waiting rooms, homes, flats,
restaurants. offices, factories ...working , eating, playing,
defecating, making love.
A chorus of voices cuts in RM phrases
To stay up
To stay down
Elevators, airports, stairs, ladders
To stay in
To stay out
Street signs, door signs, people at head of lines admitted to
restaurants and theatres
To be myself
To be others
Customs agents check passports, man identifies himself at bank
to cash cheque
To stay present
To stay absent
People watching films, reading, looking at TV ...
A composite of this sound and image track is now run on seven
second loop without change for several minutes.
Now cut in the horror pictures
To stay up
To stay down
Elevators, airports, stairs, ladders, hangings, castrations
To stay in
To stay out
Door signs, operation scenes ... doctor tosses bloody tonsils,
adenoids, appendix into receptacle
To stay present
To stay absent
People watching film ... ether mask, ether vertigo ...
triangles, spheres, rectangles, pyramids, prisms, coils go away
and come in regular sequence ...a coil coming in, two coils
coming in, three coils coming in ... a coil going away, two
coils going away, four going away
A coil straight ahead going away, two coils on the left and
right going away. three coils left right and centre going away,
four coils right left centre going away
A coil coming, two coils coming in, three coils coming in, four
coils coming in ... spirals of light ... round and round faster,
baby eaten by rats, hangings, electrocutions, castrations....
The RM can be cut in with the most ordinary scenes covering the
planet in a smog of fear ...
The RM is a built-in electronic police force armed with hideous
threats. You don't want to be a cute little wolf cub? All right,
cattle to the slaughter house meat on a hook.
Here is a nostalgic reconstruction of the old fashioned Mayan
methods. The wrong kind of workers with wrong thoughts are
tortured to death in rooms under the pyramid ... A young worker
has been given a powerful hallucigen and a sexual stimulant ...
Naked he is stripped down and skinned alive ... The Gods of pain
are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time ...The Ouab bird
stands there, screams, washing through his wild blue eyes.
Others are crabs from the waist up clicking their claws in
ecstasy, they dance around and mimic the flaved man. The scribes
are busy with sketches ...Now he is strapped into a segmented
copper centipede and placed gently on a bed of hot coals ...
Soon the priests will dig the soft meat from the shell with
their golden claws ... Here is another youth staked out on an
ant hill honey smeared on his eyes and genitals ...Others with
heavy weights on their backs are slowly dragged through the
wooden troughs in which shards obsidian have been driven ...So
the priests are the masters of pain and fear and death ...To do
right... to obey the priests ... To do wrong? the priest's very
presence and a few banal words....
The priests postulated and set up a hermetic universe of which
they were the axiomatic controllers. In so doing they became
Gods who controlled the known universe of the workers. They
became Fear and Pain, Death and Time. By making opposition
seemingly impossible they failed to make any provision for
opposition. There is evidence that this control system broke
down in some areas before the arrival of the White God. Stellae
have been found defaced and overturned, mute evidence of a
worker's revolution. How did this happen? The history of
revolutionary movements shows that they are usually led by
defectors from the ruling class. The Spanish rule in South
America was overthrown by Spanish revolutionaries. The French
were driven out of Algeria by Algerians educated in France.
Perhaps one of the priest Gods defected and organised a worker's
revolution ...
The priest Gods in the temple. They move very slowly, faces
ravaged with age and disease. Parasitic worms infest their
flesh. They are making calculations for the sacred books.
"400,000,000 years ago on this day a grievous thing happened..."
Limestone skulls rain in through the porticos. The Young Maize
God leads the workers as they storm the temple and drag the
priests out. They build a huge brush fire, throw the priests in
and then throw the sacred books in after them. Time buckles and
bends. The old Gods, surfacing from the immemorial depths of
time, burst in the sky ... Mr Hart stands there looking at the
broken sellae ... "How did this happen?"
His control system must be absolute and world wide. Because such
a control system is even more vulnerable to attack from without
than revolt within... Here is Bishop Luanda burning burning
sacred books. To give you an idea as to what is happening,
imagine our civilisation invaded by louts from outer space...
"Get some bulldozers in here. Clear out all this crap..." The
formulae of all natural sciences, books, paintings, the lot,
swept into a vast pile and burned. and that's it. No one ever
heard of it.
Three codices survived the vandalism of Bishop Landa and these
are burned around the edges.
No way to know if we have here the sonnets, the Mona Lisa or the
remenants of a Sears Roebuck catalogue after the old out-house
burned down in a brush fire. A whole civilisation went up in
smoke...
When the Spaniards arrived, they found the Mayan aristocrats
lolling in hammocks. Well, time to show them what is what. Five
captured workers bound and stripped, are castrated on a tree
stump. the bleeding sobbing, screaming bodies bodies thrown into
a pile...
"And now get this through your gook nuts. We want to see a pile
of gold big and we want to see it pronto. The White God has
spoken."
Consider now the human voice as a weapon. To what extent can the
unaided human voice duplicate effects that can be done with a
tape recorder? Learning to speak with the mouth shut, thus
displacing your speech, is fairly easy. You can also learn to
speak backwards, which is fairly difficult. I have seen people
who can repeat what you are saying after you and finish at the
same time. This is a most disconcerting trick, particularly when
praciticed on a mass scale at a political rally. Is it possible
to actually scramble speech? A far-reaching biologic weapon can
be forged from a new language. In fact such a language already
exists. It exists as Chinese, a total language closer to
multileval structure of experience, with a script derived from
hieroglyphs, more closely related to the objects and areas
described. The equanimity of the Chinese is undoubtedly derived
from their language being structured for greater sanity. I
notice the Chinese, wherever they are retain the written and
spoken language, while other immigrant peoples will lose their
language in two generations. The aim of this project is to build
up a language in which certain falsifications inherit in all
existing western languages will be made incapable of
formulation. The follow- falsifications to be deleted from the
proposed language.
This IS OF IDENTITY. You are an animal. You are a body. Now
whatever you may be you are not an "animal", you are not a
"body", because these are verbal labels. The IS of identity
always carries the assignment of permanent condition. To stay
that way. All name calling presupposes the IS of identity. This
concept is unnecessary in a hieroglyphic language like ancient
Egyptian and in fact frequently omitted. No need to say the sun
IS in the sky, sun in sky suffices. The verb TO BE can easily be
omitted from any languages and the followers of Count Korgybski
have done this, eliminating the verb TO BE in English. However,
it is difficult to tidy up the English language by arbitrary
exclusion of concepts which remain in force so long as the
unchanged language is spoken.
THE DEFINITE ARTICLE THE. THE contains the implication of one
and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, The wrong,
If there is another, then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer
THE universe, The way. The definite article THE will be deleted
and the indefinite article A will take it's place.
THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or
mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted
from the language and replaced by juxtaposition, by AND This is
done to some extent in any pictorial language where two concepts
stand literally side by side. These falsifications inherent in
the English and other western alphabetical languages give the
reactive mind commands their overwhelming force in these
languages. Consider the IS of identity. When I say to be me, to
be you, to be myself, to be others- whatever I may be called
upon to be or to say that I am- I am not the verbal label
"myself." The word BE in the English language contains, as a
virus contains, its precoded message of damage, the categorial
imperative of permanent condition. To be a body, to be an
animal. If you see the relation of a pilot to his ship, you see
crippling force of the reactive mind command to be a body.
Telling the pilot to be the plane, then who will pilot the
plane?
The IS of identity, assigning a rigid and permanent status, was
greatly reinforced by the customs and passport control the came
in after World War I. Whatever you may be, you are not the
verbal labels in your passport. any more than you are the word
"self." So you must be prepared to prove at all times that you
are what you are not. Much of the falsification inherent in the
categorical definite THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE
space, THE energy, THE matter, THE unIverse. Definite article
THE contains the implications of no other. THE universe locks
you in THE, and denies the possibility of any other. If other
universes are possible, then the universe is no longer THE it
becomes A. The definite article THE is deleted and replaced by
A. many of the RM commands are in point of fact contradictory
commands and a contradictory command gains its force from the
Aristotelian concept of either/or. To do everything, to do
nothing, to have everything, to have nothing, to do it all, to
do not any, to stay up, to stay down, to stay in, to stay out,
to stay present, to stay absent. These are in point of fact
either/or propositions. To do nothing OR everything, to have it
all, OR not any, to stay present OR to stay absent. Either/or is
more difficult to fomulate in a written language where both
alternatives are pictorially represented and can be deleted
entirely from the spoken language. The whole reactive mind can
be in fact reduced to three little words - to be "THE". That is
to be what you are not, verbal formulations.
I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as
acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It
will be seen that the falsifications of syllabic western
languages are in point of fact actual virus mechanisms. The IS
of identity the purpose of a virus is to SURVIVE. To survive at
any expense to the host invaded. To be an animal, to be a body.
To be an animal body that the virus can invade. To be animals,
to be bodies. To be more animal bodies, so that the virus can
move from one body to another. To stay present as an animal
body, to stay absent as antibody or resistance to the body
invasion.
The categorial THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE
virus universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is alway
you OR the virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the
conflict formula which is seen to be archetypical virus
mechanism. The proposed language will delete these virus
mechanisms and make them impossible of formulation in the
language. This language will be a tonal language like Chinese,
it will also have a hieroglyphic script as pictorial as possible
without being to cumbersome or difficult to write. This language
will give one option of silence. When not talking, the user of
this language can take in the silent images of the written,
pictorial and symbol languages.
I have described here a number of weapons and tactics in the war
game. Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game
in question. All games are hostile. Basically there is only one
game from here to eternity. Mr Hubbard says that Scientology is
a game where everybody wins. There are no games where everybody
wins. That's what games are all about, winning and losing ...
The Versailles Treaty ... Hitler dances the Occupation Jig ...
War criminals hang at Nuremberg ...It is a rule of this game
that there can be no final victory since this mean the end of
the war game. Yet every player must believe in final victory and
strive for it with all his power. Faced by the nightmare of
final defeat he has no alternative. So all technologies with
escalating efficiency produce more and more total weapons until
we have the atom bomb which could end the game by destroying all
players. Now mock up a miracle. The so stupid players decide to
save the game. They sit down around a big table and draw up a
plan for the immediate deactivation and eventual destruction of
all atomic weapons. Why stop there? Conventional bombs are
unnecessarily destructive if nobody has them hein?
Let's turn back the war clock back to 1917:
Keep the home fires burning
Through the hearts are yearning
There's a long, long trail awinding ... .
Back to the American Civil War...
"He has loosed the fatal lightning of this terrible swift
sword." His fatal lightning didn't cost as much in those days.
Save a lot on the defence budget this way on back to flintlocks,
matchlocks, swords, armour, lances, bows and arrows, spears,
stone axes and clubs. Why stop there? Why not grow teeth and
claws, poison fangs, stingers, spines, quills, beaks and suckers
and stink glands and fight in out in the muck hein?
That is what this revolution is about. End of game. New games?
There are no new games from here to eternity.
END OF THE WAR GAME.
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